January 26, 2005

For 50 weeks of 2005, osymyso -- one of WFMU's favorite bootleggers -- is going to put a track from his new album on his website, ultimately forming the basis for a proper release. he's making it as he goes along - a public work-in-progress of sorts. the first 3 fragments are up, check this weekly.

January 23, 2005

Today is January 23 and, thanks to Scientists and Experts, we are now able to prepare for what comes next—that is, January 24. Because just this past week Scientists and Experts made a big announcement: They have devised a formula for finding the long-sought Worst Day of the Year.

Is April the cruelest month? No, that’s just some poetry, whereas this is SCIENCE—or at least math. Dr. Cliff Arnall, of the University of Cardiff (that’s in Wales), has devised a formula, to whit:
[W + (D-d)] x TQ / M x NA, where W = weather, D = debt, d = monthly salary, T = time since Christmas, Q = time since failure of New Year’s resolution, M = motivational level, and NA = need to take action. Just because you and I may not understand how something like the “need to take action” becomes a quantifiable number, that doesn’t make Dr. Arnall wrong. Certainly not. For Dr. Arnall is a Scientist and, in fact, an actual Expert on seasonal disorders. In Wales. By putting in the secret numbers that correspond to weather and motivational level, Dr. Arnall realized that January 24 is the absolute crappiest day of any year. “Eureka!” she said, except in Welsh.

It’s odd, though, that the Worst Day of the Year comes so close to the Best Day of the Year, which is January 27—my birthday. It is even closer to Sluggo’s birthday, and not that far from the birthdays of other WFMU staffers, whose names you would immediately recognize if I were to write them here.

We interrupt this blog entry to bring you a report from the WFMU Storm Center. It snowed quite a lot yesterday and last night, and was extremely cold and blowy. Scientists and Experts say this is to be expected in the Northern Hemisphere at this time of year, which they refer to as “winter.” Today local residents are beginning to dig out from Snowstorm ’05. And now back to the blog.

One might wonder why Scientists and Experts have not yet devised a formula for the Most Fan-effing-tastic Day of the Year, but this is in part because the British travel company that funded Dr. Arnall’s research has never asked for that. They just wanted to know when people might be most likely to book vacations. Dr. Alan Cohen, the spokesperson for the Royal College of General Practitioners, was asked about Dr. Arnall’s equation. (In a country where “Cliff” is a woman’s name, the use of gender-neutral terms such as “spokesperson” is preferred). “I’m sure it’s right,” Dr. Cohen said. So there.

January 20, 2005

I'm sitting here at quarter to two Saturday morning sipping a nice cocktail - a new concoction, very much needed - pulled together from what I had in the house. I don't know if it already exists or if I’ve created something truly new. I doubt it. How often does THAT happen? It doesn’t matter, really. What matters is that it’s good to sip and it has alcohol in it. I need it for my nerves.

About half an hour ago I was driving home to Hoboken from WFMU. Westbound on Montgomery, headed toward Grove, I see this white and orange object in the oncoming lane. I couldn’t tell what it was. I squinted through my windshield and figured, Piece of clothing. Maybe an old stuffed animal. Then I was upon the thing. It was a dead cat. An orange tabby with a white belly.

I pulled up even with the cat, stopped and put on my four-way flashers. I got out of the car and walked over to where it lay, then crouched above it. Someone had just hit it. I can say that with assurance because I’ve seen many a runned-over cat in my day. Cats that have been hit a second time are pretty much flat. This one wasn’t. There wasn’t much damage on the face up side. If it weren’t for the blood-trail you’d think Kitty had decided to sleep in the street.

The face down side was another story. As I rolled him over, another cat - a gray tabby - came out from an alley on the north side of the street. It ran past me into an alley opposite, where our orange friend was headed, I suppose. Our orange friend had probably been caught completely unawares by an undercarriage. It had been hit mostly in the head. The left side of Kitty's face was smashed in, covered in fresh blood. Its right eye was dislodged, the fur over its right front elbow completely skinned away. There was two feet of blood smeared down the street. Kitty never had a chance.

People go fast down Montgomery. As I stood there, several Hondas and Maximas and Jettas went roaring past, stereos pumping to the max, doing 40 - 50 miles an hour. At that speed and that volume you wouldn’t know if you hit your own grandmother, never mind a fifteen-pound cat.

No one slowed down to see what I was up to. No one slowed down for anything.

I decided to move the cat out of the road before it became permanently bonded to the pavement (I hate when people keep running over some dead thing in the road, never thinking to remove it). I got my hands around its middle, lifted and heard a definite groan. I carried Kitty at arm's length and could swear I felt it purring. I laid it down in a huge planter on the sidewalk.

The planter was full of fresh dirt and I thought I could bury the cat in it but looked around and found nothing to dig with. Then I got alarmed, thinking about the groan I’d heard. Could it be the cat was still alive? I've seen cats get the hell torn out of them and live. I once extracted a cat from under the hood of a neighbor’s Volvo, where it had gotten firmly wedged in the fan blades when the car was started. The cat lost a leg but survived. What about this one? Did it have one life left? I shook it, hard. I squeezed it again. It wheezed once more but the wheezing must've been air being pushed out of its lungs. By me.

I stood around feeling stupid, wishing a cop could pass by so I could tell someone official. I didn't want to leave dead, bloody Kitty there for some kids to see first thing in the morning. I waited around a few minutes and asked passersby if they knew the cat (it had no tags). The first two looked at me strangely. The third guy didn’t. He was an Asian man, late twenties, nicely dressed, coming home from the train, like everyone else at that hour. I brought him over to the planter and he recognized the cat. I told him about finding it in the street and the first thing he said was, “Did you run it over?” I told him “No” but wasn't sure he believed me. He seemed to feel bad about it. He said something I thought sounded funny: “If it's still there in the morning I'll get rid of it.” I offered to do so, saying, “If I had a plastic bag...” I thought he might take the hint and go get me one. “If it's still there in the morning...” he repeated.

“If you have a plastic bag you could take it and bury it.” I said. He nodded. We wished each other good night. I flipped the cat back over on its “good” side then got in my car and drove home. I made the drink when I got through the door. It's almost gone. I think I’ll make another. Here's the recipe:

Three ice cubes, crushed
One teaspoon of honey,
One teaspoon of maple syrup
One teaspoon brown sugar
Two fingers of bourbon (I used Old Grandad)
Orange-Tangerine Juice
Sprig of mint

January 16, 2005

On Thursday DJ Kelly and I had to go out to the station to be filmed for a documentary called “Guest of Cindy Sherman.” Maybe some of you heard “The Kelly Jones Show, Starring Bronwyn Carlton” last May 25 (it’s in the archives) when we answered Listener Paul H-O’s request for advice as to how to deal with his famous girlfriend. We guessed it was Cindy Sherman and that turned out to be right. Now he’s making a film about his problem, and he wanted us to be in it.

I used to think that people who wrote fiction were actually making up the stories, but then I met some fiction writers and found out that most of it is just thinly-veiled autobiography. That was a little disillusioning, although then I started writing fiction myself. Anyway, it turns out that documentaries are similar: When you watch them you think you’re seeing something just the way it happens, but actually it’s all pretty much staged. They wanted us to re-enact the show we did last May, and I was hoping it would be like Civil War re-enactors and we’d get cool uniforms and get to make our own bullets and stuff, but it wasn’t like that at all.

First, it was really hard to schedule the shoot, because Listener Paul H-O is working with real film crew guys who are all working on multiple projects, and I work at my weird dayjob where it’s hard to get a day off, and of course DJ Kelly is a delicate hothouse flower and must be scheduled for the exact day she is in bloom. Plus we needed to film in Studio A, so we had to pick a day when everyone could get there AND our engineer, John Fog, wasn’t doing maintenance AND the DJ whose show we would disrupt would agree to broadcast from Studio B. Thanks to DJ Diane Kamikaze for letting us have the studio during her regularly scheduled show, we were able to shoot for 3 hours on Thursday. DJ Volunteer Director Scott was invaluable, too—he spent hours helping the crew work out all the technical audio stuff. Program Director Brian helped a lot with scheduling, and Station Manager Ken peeked in the window, and I know DJ Special Events Director Mike did something, because he always does.

Anyway, it was sort of stressful. There were big lights everywhere and cameral guys and then, because one film crew wasn’t enough, Phil and Lauren came in to film the filming of the Paul H-O documentary for the WFMU documentary. DJ Kelly and I were sitting in the middle of the maelstrom, and they told us to relax and just do our show the way we normally do, except not with bed music and maybe the director was going to feed us lines through our headphones. I guess it went okay, though—they kept telling us it was good. Then we changed clothes and invented a completely made-up show where we had Listener Paul H-O into the studio and interviewed him. If you ever see the movie, you’ll know that part documents not a real show that we ever actually did but the show that we pretended in retrospect that we had done.

I liked all the film guys very much, and the only thing that bothered me about the whole experience was when we were doing the faux show and they had us introduce it by saying something like, “Now that we found out that Paul H-O’s girlfriend really is Cindy Sherman, we wanted him to come in and talk to us in person.” That made it sound like we were celebrity suck-ups, and it’s something I would never do—have someone come on a show just because they were famous or knew someone famous. We were genuinely interested in Listener Paul H-O’s problem, but it didn’t matter to us who his girlfriend really was.

Paul H-O is planning to have a screening of the film “Guest of Cindy Sherman” next summer, so keep an eye out for that. DJ Kelly and I plan to arrive at the screening as if it’s a big premiere and we’re huge stars. I want us to wear sparkly dresses and arrive in a white stretch VW Beetle.

When I got home on Thursday I opened my mail and found I’d been invited to Petra Nemcova’s tsunami disaster benefit at the club NA. Petra Nemcova is the Czech supermodel who got her pelvis shattered in the tsunami and held on to a palm tree for 8 hours while her photographer boyfriend was washed away. I have no idea how I got on the list for this event, which featured “special guest host supermodels Jessica Miller, Anne V., and actress Rashida Jones” and even listed the name of the celebrity doorperson who was going to be letting people inside—not a celebrity who was acting as doorperson, but somebody who does that for a living and is therefore a celebrity in and of themselves. Obviously someone made a big mistake. I am a middle-aged suburban housewife and not even a DJ any more, although I play one in documentaries. I hope they made a lot of money for the tsunami victims, though.
Thanks for reading my blog entry, and may God Bless.
-Bronwyn C.

January 15, 2005

So there I was at the gym this morning with all the other hamster people, running on my exercise wheel while listening to The Kleptones on my iPod, when I started noticing an interesting football film clip being repeated on various TV screens around the place. Some player from the Minnesota Vikings was shown scoring a touchdowm then leaning over and rubbing his hiney against the goalpost. What's the big deal with that? Since I'm a TV watcher, and not a TV listener, it was difficult to figure out what was so scandalous about this end zone dance, but apparently the player was fined $10,000 for it.

Turns out the player is Randy Moss from the Minnesota Vikings, and he was fined $10,000 by the NFL for mooning the opposing team's fans after his touchdown.

Only problem is, he didn't moon anybody. Last I heard, mooning involved pulling down your pants and baring your butt cheeks at the intended moon-ee. Moss only pretended to pull his pants down, as you can see.

No matter. In the post-Orwellian age in which we live, it's the thought that counts. The NFL has taken a page from the FCC's playbook, and is fining this guy for what he was pretending to do, not for what he actually did.

This is just like the FCC's recent $1.2 million "Married By America" fine against Fox television, the largest FCC fine ever. It was a remarkable fine for two reasons. First, the offending (and therefore illegal) scenes in the show included a bachelor party in which attendees licked whipped cream off of strippers pixillated boobs. That's right, pixillated. Any genitalia or nudity in the show was scrambled so it couldnt actually be seen.

But according to the FCC, a pixillated boob is just as dangerous as the real mccoy. A handful of viewers from one Fox affiliate complained, and the FCC in its infinite wisdom, multiplied the fine by the number of Fox affiliates that aired the scrambled mammary glands, despite the fact that not a single viewer from these dozens of other Fox affiliates actually complained. That's the second remarkable aspect of this fine - the FCC reversed it's longstanding policy of fining on the basis of listener complaints, and fined dozens of stations which were 100% complaint-free.

The FCC got started in this approach back in 2001, when it fined two commercial stations $7,000 a piece for airing what was the number one song in the country at the time, Eminem's The Real Slim Shady. Now we all know what a potty mouth Marshal Mathers has on him, so the stations were naturally broadcasting the radio edit of the song. You heard right - they aired the version of the song that had all the cuss words bleeped out. They were fined anyway. That FCC decision is here. The stations contested the fine, and one of them eventually prevailed, after spending far more than the amount of their fine in legal fees. But you can see that not only was the FCC not initimated from fining for non-existent words (or images), the idea is actually catching on! Hence the NFL's 10 grand fine against Randy Moss.

Gregory Whitehead "Selected works, 1984-2004": A comprehensive twenty-year survey of MP3s, comprised of 52 tracks, varying in length from a few minutes to over an hour. Several of the pieces are heard here for the first time; others were commissioned by the BBC and New American Radio; many are live air-checks and full-length radio-plays. Also included in this survey are several pieces of writing by Whitehad on the subject radio, ranging from interviews to manifestoes.

January 14, 2005

Ah, the rush of hearing something so outta left field, and out of step with the progression of musical trends is something we all seek. And these days music, no matter how marginal, finds easy avenues of access, which only stokes you up to be thirsty for more, more, more. DFA remixes of African bands who build their own instruments? Yeah, yeah. Church choir of kids doing Radiohead songs? Whatever! But a recent on-air session I had with noiseniks To Live and Shave In LA led me down the path to discovery when band members Tom Smith and Andrew WK excitedly relayed tales of going bonkers after one of their shows in Baltimore. It seems the in-house DJ piled on sets of total Attention Defecit Disorder craziness that locked in on almost randomly selected passages (or pronounced hooks) that pounded with Gabber-like intensity ad infinitum. I wanted to hear it, but I already knew Tom's tolerance for Gabber was way over mine.

Finally getting my hands on the DJ Technics' comp and a slab of 12" singles put out by Balto's Clubtrax Record Store, I can fully agree that this is officially the shit, and it has been on my in-transit headphones nonstop for days, freezing phrases like "lookin' for the hoody-hood rat" in my cranium to the point of complete obsession. Baltimore Tracks, or "Doo Dew" as it's sometimes called, is totally raw and lo-tech. The straightforward beats at high-but-not-overpowering BPMs and the samples accompanying them will at first hit you as ridiculously overused, even obvious (sometimes way-familiar soul classic bits like the "baby baby" from "Where Did Our Love Go"), but by the third minute of the stuck groove of Johnny Blaze's looplock of kids screaming the Spongebob Squarepants theme I was totally had, for the entire duration of the mix CD. As long as I was moving that is; the second I came home and put it back on it didn't work and quickly drove my missus up the wall. Understandably.After a long day of work, the last thing she needs to hear is house music thumping with Debonair Samir's loop of South Park's "Unclefucker" song.

Aside from the immediacy of the mix, the ad nauseum phrase repetition is the real punk rock element to this. The DJ has a loop and sure as hell is gonna use it to drive you nuts. Or at least to a lost-mind state on the dancefloor, though the sheer ridiculousness of people all losing their minds to "Unclefucker" rather than your usual sample is totally befuddling. I would give anything to be on a balcony watching a crowd during this moment. But not to discount the music: it is crafted amazingly to add progression to what could just be an otherwise stuck track. The use of noise is as spine-tingling as the first time you heard PE drop it into their old records, and when the mix isn't quite flowing, a big, distorto voice comes on and yells DJ Technics' name to sew the divide almost to cover up the fact that the transition has to happen. One track dispenses with the drums track altogether and replaces it with gunshots (with a leftover beat in the measure devoted to recocking!) and works pretty damn amazingly.

I'll just tie it up by saying it's not for casuals ears, and it may not be the future of dance music, but itsure as hell is a formula that is truly a warped concoction. I dunno what the IDM listoids have to say about it, either, I am sure there is a lot of overintellectualizing going on somewhere. I did read an article called "The new Dylan" which was a hilarious thing to say, and even makes sense. It's somethingway out of left field for sure, and it's genius.

Listener Victor writes in from Minneapolis with a photo of private press LP from the late ’70s or early ‘80s that he recently came across at a flea market stall in Duluth, too intriguing not to buy, even though the record itself was MIA. Being the global center for private press Scandinavian LPs that we are (especially ones with front covers that depict strange-looking dogs), he naturally wrote to us wondering what could tell him. Well, Victor, we know a little, but wish we could tell you more.

Back when the “U” in WFMU still stood for “Upsala” and the station was part of a Lutheran college campus in New Jersey, we used to get occasional donations of record collections from former students or their families. There was tons of Nordic/Scandinavian dreck, and a few DJs went through Swedish country music phases. But for a brief period in the late ‘80s, the hands-down DJ favorite was an extremely rare LP from Stavanger, Norway by the group Kasvot Växt with the improbable but absolutely real name í rokk.

It was such a favorite, in fact, that within a year or so our copy of í rokk walked away with a certain now ex-DJ. And so rare that it was only at our annual Record Fair a few years ago that we’ve even seen a copy since, albeit at a price that would’ve cut well into the Record Fair’s profits had we reacquired it on behalf of station’s library.

What we know for sure are their names, at least as they were credited on the album--Horst Guomundurson, Georg Guomundrson, Jules Haugen, and Cleif Jårvinen--though no instruments are credited. (One very stoned DJ had a theory that the bandmembers actually played in different configurations on each song.) í rokk was pressed in Stavanger, and there’s a label credited, Elektrisk Tung, but who really knows if that was a real label or just a joke by the band or one of their friends?

The lyrics, which we guessed were in Norwegian, were impossible to understand, of course. There were weird synthesizers that sounded either homemade or like some obscure European model. One song, “Liggur í Gegnum,” I believe, featured chanting and became a hit on the dance floor at the DJ holiday party that year, not long before the LP disappeared.

During that all-too-brief period when the album was at the station, though, we tried to get some of the song titles and lyrics translated by enlisting the help of a Norwegian minister visiting campus for a semester. And, if you think inviting a Norwegian minister into the den of iniquity that was our college radio station in 1988 was a bad idea you, dear listener, would be absolutely correct. There’s a good chance he was put off by the smells emanating from the DJ lounge before he even got to the listening station at the record library, but he tried to be polite. At least at first.

From the jacket, he could only tell us that the band’s name was actually in two languages, which was news to us, and when he listened to the record itself, he told us that the lyrics seemed to be possibly in even more than two languages. Besides Norwegian, at least one of the languages seemed to be Finnish, and maybe also Swedish, though he wasn’t sure, and clearly was in no mood to figure it out.

What is indisputable is that the words he did understand seemed to upset him greatly, and the visiting Norwegian minister didn’t even make it through the first side of the record. In DJ lore, the troublesome chorus had something to do with what he hastily translated as “the cubes,” after which the young minister reportedly departed the record library while remarking that he didn’t think that anybody should be singing about such topics, let alone to a potential audience of young music fans. Cubes? Fuck if we know.

It’s a record we dearly hope surfaces again someday in playable shape, and we’re keeping our eyeballs peeled. Frankly, we don’t care if some wealthy collector hoards a copy as long as they make mp3s for the rest of us. We’d just like to hear it again! And if anybody knows anything about those fucking cubes, please get in touch.

WFMU recently held its annual "Holiday" party and - as usual - lots of non-staffers showed up. We encourage this - it's a great way to bring new blood into the station so us aging vampires can suckle - but the initial interaction between those of us "on the inside" and our listeners can often be awkward. Because I kibbitz with the public every week on my show - Aerial View - I'm frequently accosted at these station events. It usually goes something like this:

LISTENER: "Hey, are you Chris T.?"ME: "Yes, yes I am Chris T."LISTENER: "You hung up on me last week!"ME: "Yeah but... I but... see but..."

See how quickly this conversation dead-ended? I'd like to help WFMU's listeners and staff avoid these pitfalls by outlining some DOs & DON'Ts to remember when meeting for the first time:

LISTENERS:

DON'TSneak up on the WFMU DJ/Talkshow Host. You will spook your prey and send him/her fleeing. Always approach the WFMUer from head-on, keeping your hands out of your pockets at all times.

DOIndicate to the WFMU DJ, etc., that you are not armed by waving or extending a handshake.

DON'TMis-identify who you're speaking with. A man at a WFMU Record Fair spent 15 minutes trying to convince me I was Andy Breckman. He kept saying, "You know, the show where you had the guys at the tollbooth and you blah blah blah...." No matter how many times I told him it wasn't my show he was listening to, he wouldn't accept that I wasn't Andy Breckman. I finally owned up to it, told him to go fuck himself and never listen to 7 Second Delay again.

DODouble-check the identity of your new friend: "Say, you ARE Andy Breckman, right?"

DON'TAnnounce to anyone within earshot, "HEY! It's BRONWYN!!!" once you've confirmed the identity of your new WFMU friend.

DO"Cut to the chase," as they say. Your typical WFMUer has trouble staying focused and may lose interest during a long, rambling, "You won't remember me..." introduction. State your name and keep it brief.

DON'TIntercept a WFMU DJ or Talkshow Host on the way to the bathroom. At the Loop Lounge during a Glen Jones show a guy recognized my voice, stepped in front of me and began spinning an elaborate story about a call he made YEARS ago to Aerial View. I'm standing there with my eyeballs floating and he's nattering away. I finally said, "I really gotta pee..." and he stepped aside.

DOFollow the WFMUer into the bathroom and continue your yarn while he or she is peeing. We don't mind, really.

DON'TTell your new WFMU friend: "You don't look ANYTHING like I thought you would." Most WFMU DJs (and some Talkshow Hosts) - because of breeding or dissolute lifestyles - don't look at all like you expect they will. This remark, no matter how tenderly offered, usually is heard as, "You're much uglier/fatter/balder/older than I imagined." Remember, if you want friends, be friendly.

DOCompliment your new WFMU friend by saying something like, "You do a wonderful show. It's the high point of my week." Lie if you must.

DON'TGet into specifics: "Do you remember that record you played back in March when I called you in the studio and said it sounded exactly like this lullaby my sister's aunt used to sing to me at the beach - the same aunt who made the tomato and mozzarella sandwiches, the ones she'd drizzle with olive oil, on that Italian bread, the bread she got on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx - and you told me the name of that song and I said I'd write it down but I totally forgot to write it down and I also forgot the name of the song. DO YOU REMEMBER THAT SONG?!"

DOKeep the entire interaction brief. WFMUers are busy people with lots of responsibilities and serious drinking to do.

DON'TRequest a song (or, in the case of a talkshowhost, topic). No WFMUer carries a notepad everywhere. Get your own damn show and play/discuss whatever you want.

DOOffer to have sex with the WFMUer, even if your mental image of the DJ (or Talkshow Host) and actual reality violently collide. The WFMUer may not be able to take you up on it but we all appreciate the overture.

DJs (and Talkshow Hosts):

DORemember those four little words that can ease any social awkwardness when meeting your public: "I really gotta pee."

January 13, 2005

Why a WFMU blog? Is there anything we can offer that isn't already online? If I view my blog entries as just a continuation of my on air personality I should stop now.

Or I can continue, place a few words one after the other think of them as small segues, indeterminate in both origin and consequence. So, in the beginning we have the word and everyone knows that bird is the word...nah, we're not going to go there. We're going to go here instead.

There, wasn't that disturbing. Thirsty now aren't you? Here, perhaps this shall offer relief from this faint yet ridiculous voice that has violated the beautiful white of this space with its damned alphabet.

You feel it too don't you? The necessity of emptiness, 3'44" of blank (not of the stare variety mind you).

Well, it ain't gonna happen here cause it's like dead air and this a radio station after all. Who knows what will happen in the weeks to come? Perhaps some interesting liner notes; perhaps a look back at the failed attempts and forward to their eventual rehabilitation; maybe, all the important stuff that is quickly forgotten. After all, this is a test. If you get to the cheese, sorry!

Punk Rock songs about New Jersey seem like a no-brainer, don't they? People yell a lot in Punk Rock. People yell a lot in New Jersey. Don't be too startled by this alarming similarity and don't get too hot and bothered, because I'm only going to treat you to my two favorite examples. NJOK
by the band Detention, and the slightly more abrasive (and considerably less complimentary) Hoboken_Sucks by Äss (featuring WFMU's Brian Turner on guitar).

Detention is more famous for their oft-deified track "Dead Rock & Rollers" -- a song that I happen to know enjoys iTunes space on the personal computer of Irwin Chusid, which I recently stole from him. (The computer, not the song.) I understand that the band still plays live from time to time, and that the Shields brothers of said band own a gym somewhere in Jersey Centralia.

The legacy of Äss is somewhat more mystical. After channeling and re-interpreting only the best parts of Action Swingers -styled brutality, the members of Äss drifted to other projects, as varied as brickface and stucco installation to making pilgrimages to the Burning Man festival, where one member personally stuck his head into the Goat of Truth's papier mache ass and achieved enlightenment. Or something closely approximating it, if your standards are low.

I'm sure that somewhere right now, some ex-member of irrelevant, podunk Jersey hardcore band #227 is firing up their angry email finger in order to tell me what a gross misinterpretation I'm giving to their scene by not mentioning their band's song about the tough streets of Mahwah (image by Google Image Search), former Governor Tom Keane's weirdo accent, or the chemical fire that burned for years underneath the Pulaski Skyway (image by Burt Schlatter ). Well, things are tough all over. Like I said, I was only gonna mention my two favorites. Perhaps you can find validate your teens while perusing the formidable recollections of this man?

January 10, 2005

The Tape-beatles, Public Works, PhonoStatic Cassettes: UbuWeb is pleased to announce the launch of the Public Works archive, consisting of digitial transfers of dozens of cassettes, LPs, and CDs into MP3s. The Tape-beatles are a collaboration of varying membership that make music and audio art recordings,"expanded cinema" performances, videos, printed publications, and works in other media. They work under the aegis of Public Works Productions. PhotoStatic was a magazine, a periodical series of printed works, that focused on xerography (photocopy) as a creative medium. Founded in 1983, the title continued in some form until as late as 1998. A companion publication on audio cassette was dubbed PhonoStatic, with the inaugural issue appearing in 1984. In all, ten cassette issues were released at roughly six-month intervals, culminating with the "Audio Collage" cassette in 1989. The complete PhonoStatic cassette archive is available on UbuWeb.

Now that you've got a soundtrack, let me express my extreme frustration with the lack of decent Mexican food in New York City. Am I the only one who has noticed this and is regularly bothered by it? It's not like I routinely crave it... I like to think of myself as a man with a varied palate who can appreciate a good tuna fois gras (pictured left) as much as a cilantro-laiden Mexican speciality. I know, I know... the problem is that there's not as many Mexicans in New York as there are in cities like L.A. or San Francisco, but after 15 years on the prowl, I've come up with exactly ONE good local Mexican restaurant -- the lamely named Taco Grill , on 9th Avenue across the street from Bellevue Bar, which has been the scene of much off-mic FMU DJ debauchery in recent years. (I can't even begin to describe with words what I saw Scott Williams do there once, but I can do a good visual impression of it, so ask me to do it at the next Record Fair -- It involves a cigarette, a zipper, and a birthday hat.)

Anyway, Taco Grill has all the great features missing from the garden variety Tex-Mex chains that dot our shores here in NYC. Which is to say, they have a foosball table in the back, they serve Negra Modelo, and the menu offers burritos that are the size of a child's leg. Hang around long enough and one of the tough old-timers at the bar will challenge you and your dainty hipster pal to a game of foosball, and they won't necessarily be nice about it. But you'll have a great time and be back for more.

This concludes my test of dropping pictures into alternate sides of the blog template and embedding droplinks to RealAudio archives within text.

January 09, 2005

Hello, Everybody--nice seeing you again.
The WFMU post-holiday party was last night, and I wish I could tell you all about which DJ showed up dressed as the Baby New Year in a diaper, and who spent the whole evening riding up and down in the elevator drinking Jagermeister, and what Program Director Brian did on the pony ride--but unfortunately I wasn’t there. I don’t go to parties very often. Usually I tell people that parties make me uncomfortable because of my face-blindness, which is true, but really it’s just that I’m married. The main reason I ever went to parties in the past was to get drunk enough to get over my natural aversion to having sex with another person, but of course that’s all over once you get married. So I don’t expect I’ll ever go to a party ever again in my life. Why should I?
I had to go to my dayjob’s office Christmas party this year, but I don’t think that counts because it was more like work than a party per se. I did get kind of drunk, but not enough to have sex with any of those people. The nice lady from accounting who always tries to get people to do the electric slide with her tried to get me to dance, but I told her I couldn’t because there wasn’t any pole.
I have no idea what the people at my dayjob think of me. A couple of weeks ago a bunch of us ordered in Chinese food and we were eating lunch together in the little conference room, and everyone was talking about the tsunami and what they could do to help those poor people. I said I’d already written a check to the Islamic Circle of North America, which is a Muslim charity that’s taking donations for tsunami relief. There could not have been a more shocked silence if I had crawled up on the conference table and emitted a big poo in front of everyone. I was kind of surprised at their reaction, and I’m still not sure I understand it.
On Tuesday, December 28, two days after the tsunami, the Daily News ran a box on page 3 headed “Here’s How You Can Help.” It listed a few agencies--AmeriCares, Save the Children, and the Islamic Circle of North America. It made sense to me that religious groups with some local presence would have the best chance of distributing aid, and Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country in the world. But since that day I haven’t seen another mention of Islamic aid groups anywhere. I’ve checked newspapers and online, and they all list a variety of agencies, but not any Muslim ones. Actually, they usually list 1 or 2 Jewish agencies, which strikes me as a little odd because I don’t think the tidal wave hit any areas with large Jewish populations. But anyway, I can’t think of any good reason why Muslim aid organizations wouldn’t be listed--just bad ones. Like there was a survey recently that found 44% of Americans think the federal government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim-Americans.
Okay, here’s something even scarier: Last week there was a newspaper story that said Richard Lugar, the U.S. Senator from Indiana, was on a TV show called “Fox News Sunday” on New Year’s Day, and he said on that show that he thought it was a bad idea for the federal government to lock up terror suspects FOR LIFE without giving them a chance to defend themselves in court. But it turns out there wouldn’t be any way to take them to court because the suspects they want to lock up FOR LIFE are the ones they don’t have enough evidence to prosecute. And apparently Colin Powell was on the TV show “Meet the Press” the same day, and he was asked about the federal govenment’s plan to build a 200-bed “super-maximum-security” prison for these alleged terror *suspects,* and he said he didn’t have enough facts to talk about it, in spite of his own people being involved in the planning. So there’s a plan to put people in prison FOR LIFE because there’s not enough evidence to bring charges against them--What country are we living in? Have you even heard about this? ‘Cause I hadn’t. But, like everyone else, all I know is what I read on the Internet.
Anyway, D.J. Kelly and I are going to be in a movie that’s going to be shot at FMU this week, so maybe I can write about that next Sunday.
Thanks for reading my blog entry, and may God bless.
-Bronwyn C.

January 06, 2005

New Jersey – like most places in the world – can lay claim to at least one Eighth Wonder of the World. If you’ve seen The Sopranos, you’ve seen our Eighth Wonder: the Pulaski Skyway. A succession of interconnected bridges and roadway soaring high over the Hackensack River and Passaic Rivers and the town of Kearny, the Skyway (as locals call it) is, technically a “viaduct”, carrying Routes 1 & 9 one and a third miles from Jersey City to Newark.

Originally called “The Diagonal Highway”, it was built at a cost of twenty million dollars, fifteen construction casualties and one “labor-related” murder to connect the easternmost portion of the transcontinental Lincoln Highway to the Holland Tunnel. When it opened in 1932, the Skyway got raves from the American Institute of Steel Construction, which singled it out as "Most Beautiful Steel Structure" among long-span bridges. Upon dedication, it was re-named in honor of the “Father of the American Cavalry”: Revolutionary War hero General Casimir Pulaski, killed while galloping heroically into battle.

“Galloping heroically into battle” pretty much sums up how one approaches the Skyway – as locals call it. With no shoulder to harbor police, drivers feel emboldened to go AS FAST AS THEY POSSIBLY CAN. Despite the posted 45 mile per hour speed limit, most times I'm doing twice that just to keep up with traffic. It's INSANE! And in the sixteen or so years I’ve been using the Skyway I’ve NEVER seen someone pulled over for speeding.

Which gave me an entrepreneurial idea: if the two-lane Skyway is going to be used like a speedway, why not make it official? Create a starting line, install a “Christmas tree” staging light (they count down red, yellow, green), mark off a quarter-mile and put in some automated cameras at the finish line.
The new Pulaski Speedway could host thousands of races a day.

Imagine your mother’s “pavement-pounding ’96 Honda Civic!" up against those three guys in the "ground-shaking Dodge Palacios Carpets delivery van!”. Or your “insane ’97 Jeep Wrangler taking on Big Al in his "gas-guzzling 1985 Pontiac Parisienne!” And the best part is the merchandising: I envision a whole line of Pulaski Speedway tchotckes, apparel, drinking glasses, etc., all taking advantage of its impressive silhouette and subtle Sopranos connection.
Sure, whoever gets to the finish line first gets a ticket in the mail… BUT they also get the satisfaction of knowing they beat the other guy AND a commemorative Pulaski Speedway T-shirt. The other guy just gets a ticket in the mail.